Rep. Bradley Byrne tours Brookley; touts facility’s potential

Roadwork can be seen at Aerospace Drive, near the future site of the Airbus final assembly plant at the Brookley Aeroplex on Aug. 23, 2013. (Michael Dumas/mdumas@al.com)

MOBILE, Alabama -- U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne toured the grounds of Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley Tuesday, touting the potential of the former military base in a press conference afterward.

The purpose of the pit stop was to find more ways Byrne, R-Fairhope, could leverage his position in the U.S. Congress to further develop the site.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne

Construction of Airbus’ final assembly line is already underway. The hope is, Byrne said, that it will spawn more suppliers who will feed into their operations, transforming the Mobile Bay area into an “aviation hub.”

“The more you have here, the more it will build on itself with other aviation and other high tech industries,” Byrne said. “And I don’t think it’s limited to aviation at all.”

The refrain of pushing the city to become a center for aerospace and aviation, competing with places like Jacksonville, Fla., Charleston, S.C. and Wichita, Kan., is one commonly heard.

But to get there, more development is needed.

Byrne said his office could “plug-in” to the efforts of the Mobile Airport Authority, helping them to find needed cash at the federal level.

“There are dedicated grant opportunities in Washington,” Byrne said, “It’s our job to work with our partners to make sure we maximize them.”

The Airport Authority’s Executive Director Roger Wehner said there may be some opportunities within the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Air Force or other federal agencies to seek funding.

Wehner said there are two restaurants that currently want to move onto Brookley, a signal that there may be more to come. Dunkin Donuts is already slated to move into the area.

The location, which has always been a home to aviation, is about 85 percent occupied, Wehner said. In its heydey, some 17,000 people went there for jobs.

When it closed in 1969, the force of all those employees was gone. “Literally, one day they were here and the next day they were shipped off to San Antonio, Texas and other places around the country.”

The Airport Authority was created to help steer the facility in the right direction.